“It is wonderful how happy we can be when we try.”
Troop Morale and Humour during World War One.
It is essential that any investigation of the humour of the First World War must have an appreciation both of how humour is employed in situations of intense stress and trauma, and the ways in which morale was sustained by the troops a the front line. An appreciation of comedy by the troops was essential to provide them with ways to cope with the situation at the front, and continuing morale was vital to keep them fighting. In the context of the Great War, humour and morale become interlinked themes, both supplanting and sustaining each other.
There have been various attempts to explain laughter and comedy. These fall into two major categories; the empirical and the aesthetic. The empirical tries to find a rational explanation for laughter, and the aesthetic defines laughter as part of the product of creation – therefore rendering it a spontaneous and indecipherable event. One of the most influential studies on this was done by Freud who regarded all humour as an aversion to the forbidden. Laughter is the element which separates the individual: it is “the vocal symbol of natural rebellion”. The unconscious takes control of the self and the product of this tension is laughter. This theory is however extremely crude and not particularly viable. Freud’s reliance on the unconscious assumed that all jokes were ultimately indecipherable and that the basis for all humour was discomfort. This theory leaves huge gaps in the conceptualisation of why we laugh, and this is consistent with all theories of humour. It is a subject that has continually defied real explanation; whether the theory is empirical or aesthetic, there is no clear understanding of the process of laughter, humour and the comic.
It is therefore much more productive to discuss what makes us laugh and the ways we do this. It is generally recognised that there are various situations and positions from which we laugh. In the context of the First World War, these aspects are constructed in a very specific way. Humour during the war does far more than merely amuse it’s audience. Although the comedy of the First World War is often exclusive and insular and therefore symptomatic of rebellion, it is also a technique to bind groups of people together, helping them overcome situations which they possibly would not be able to face otherwise. The troops were in a situation in which they needed to quickly find common ground, and one of their natural instincts was to do this through humour. They felt adrift from their pre-war ideals and needed to form social groups with which they could relate. The nature of the war meant that as a community they were segregated from the conventional behaviour patterns of the home front, and they therefore created cultural signifiers specific to their own situation. Comedy helped to bridge this culture shock. De Sousa explains this duality of alienation from a group but the need to identify with it in “When is it Wrong to Laugh?”, discussing the need to ridicule taboo situations. Placing these situations contextually renders them “safe” topics for comedy. He identifies two positions “inside” and “outside” the structure of a joke
“There are two characteristic manifestations of this distinction. First, we claim a right to laugh, by virtue of shared experience or community, at some things but not others. Second, we distinguish between laughing at and laughing with someone. These are…related in the following way: I cannot really laugh with you, unless I have the right to laugh; and I only have a right to laugh at you if there is a clear possibility of identification with you.” (p.293)
De Sousa uses war veterans as a prime example for this theory in action. They will laugh at casualties, aware that “it could have been them.” However, their awareness of this possibility means they do not actually find the idea of dying, or of their companions dying, particularly amusing. However, De Sousa reasons that because their personal experience allows them to identify explicitly with their dead companions, they are “entitled” to laugh about it. This type of gallows humour is more offensive to someone external to the situation, for example a civilian. They do not find this funny because they do not identify with the experience of death. However, they do identify with the soldiers (as friends, relations etc.) and laugh at their laughter whilst also finding it commendable. This concept also applies to someone regarding the war retrospectively – after time has passed, cultural changes take place in which society (now including the veterans again) views the situation differently. In the case of World War One, honouring the dead is a crucial aspect of remembrance, a valid sentiment which has nevertheless had superimposed over it the “Pity of War” myth. It is culturally offensive to decry the courage and deeds of the soldiers who died. Laughing with them has been subsumed into the more distasteful idea that we may be somehow laughing at them. Comedy is excluded from examinations of the war because it not only suggests that we are laughing at the dead, but also that the civilians and soldiers at the time may have displayed similar tendencies. This is an unsettling idea that does not fir with a modern understanding of the war. Both ideas are currently perceived to be offensive to the memory and the myth of the dead in the First World War. However, a modern reading does not want to understand on important aspect. We do not laugh at Blackadder Goes Forth because we are deriding the dead, in the same way that the civilians did not laugh at the soldiers because they thought they were gullible fools. If the crucial question to this study is “Is it wrong to laugh at war and the suffering it engenders?”, it is important to remember that whatever the situation, it is impossible and undesirable to contain humour on every count.
This is the first intellectual clash with the humour of the war and the space it is given in our conceptualisation of the war as a historical event. As De Sousa argues, during the war a great deal of comedy was produced, often dealing with the war in ways we would find highly inappropriate should they have their origins in a non-military setting. This tension changes according to the proximity of the war. The aggressive and “inappropriate” nature of wartime comedy is toned down as the audience becomes distanced from experiences at the front. Roughly speaking, the songs and the trench newspapers are the most irreverent and subversive. Then come music hall style performances, produced on rest and containing much bowdlerised material from the home front which relates exclusively to circumstances at the front. After this are plays produced and directed by officers, again performed behind the lines but in a more organised form – there were several permanent troupes among the battalions. Finally come home front entertainments, including cinema, music hall proper and satirical magazines. These were often far more aware than historians give credit for in their understanding of the war, but nevertheless have much less direct contact with the front and are therefore far less critical or acerbic.
The second theoretical concepts involving comedy and the war are the techniques used to produce humour in a literary sense. T.G.A Nelson (Comedy, Oxford University Press, 1990) applies the theories of comedy to literature and argues that although there are times when it is wrong to laugh, in human terns it is impossible to stop yourself from doing so every time without becoming either morbid or interminably dull. Some wartime literature and popular culture employs comedy because each individual text aspires to be creative and original. If the war were treated as a catastrophe every time the various modes of production would have no merit because they would be too similar and have no individual interest. Nelsons book gives valuable insight into these modes of production, especially how the themes of the Great War are dealt with in a literary sense. Initially, it is most important to remember that comedy is a distortion of reality; whilst imitating the actual, it is a device that changes and reassesses situations for us:
“Comedy thrives on disguisings, deceptions, and mistakings: that is to say, on the provisional natures of our perceptions and interpretations of reality. There are many moments when comedy portrays the confusion or disruption of these perceptions, tempting us to say, with Shakespeare’s Feste “Nothing that is so, is so”.(p.138).
Comedy therefore rewrites a situation, making either better or worse. Either way, this distancing in wartime humour is an attempt to make circumstances more tolerable.
With morbid concepts such as danger, death and tragedy, there are points in which laughter cannot be reached. This is because the party involved cannot overcome their fear of a situation, and is therefore unable to find it amusing. However, a crucial element is that “One of comedy’s responses to death is a…denial of its power or right to extinguish human personalities.” (p.33.). It is one’s own fear of mortality that leads us to want to overcome it – if we can laugh at death, we can perhaps cheat it for a short time, although we are still aware that this is only in an intellectual respect. The soldiers knew that they could be killed at any time; and laughing at this situation would at least make them feel that they could respond to death by dismissing or belittling it, even only briefly. Nelson identifies several ways in which this fear is eliminated through comedic techniques. Death can be eluded or tricked (the hero continually and implausibly turns out to be not dead after all). It can be a death that does not touch us deeply (Private Jones is dead, everyone is very sad until they realise it was the name of the Generals cat). Innocence and naivety in the face of the war comprise another key aspect: the young subaltern arriving at the front keen to destroy the entire army is one commonly inscribed in the trench journals and the songs. The body becomes an object of comedy, invoking sacrilegious behaviour and the grotesque. Robert Graves in Goodbye to All That (Penguin, 1933) describes in great detail a hand sticking out of the trench wall. It still has a piece of glove attached to it, but every soldier who walks past shakes hands with it, apparently displaying no respect or fear. As a reaction to this the audience is horrified but also impressed with the casual treatment of something so serious, again an apparent negation of fears. Lastly, war comedy is closely related to inappropriate behaviour – death is denied the cultural mores of respect and burial, danger is scorned and trivialised.
This is a dominant theme as in reality, bodies were unable to be buried, and the soldier was required to behave in a way that contradicted his own instinct – he had to stay put when attacked by shells, to live in filthy conditions, and was encouraged to kill his fellow man. Comedy of inappropriate behaviour, for example, The Wipers Times advertising flamethrowers as children’s toys were a persistent occurrence in wartime humour.
All of these aspects comprise the bastions of wartime humour, and the ways in which they all function to scorn fear and bring groups together give an indication of why comedy was so important for morale. In both a physical and mental capacity comedy at the front relates directly to group activities. S.A.Stouffer studied G.I.’s in the Second World War and concluded that humour helped “achieve a frame of mind in which it was possible…to endure and accept what could not be avoided. Humour allowed a safe discharge of dangerous tensions…(and) helped the men to achieve a kind of distance from their threatening experiences.” (p.190, The American Soldier, Princetown, 1949). Comedy during the war also enables the sense of sharedness. If one person can overcome (or be seen to overcome) their fear and satirise or joke about a situation, then others will gradually join them. The British army in particular was continually urged to “keep smiling”, and after initial dubiousness, the B.E.F discreetly encouraged concert parties, sports and other activities such as trench journals when the troops were on rest.
This idea of group cohesion is the reason why morale was so important in the army. In Men Against Fire (New York: 1947), Marshall explains why morale was so closely linked to the ways soldiers behaved.
“Morale is the thinking of an army. It is the whole complex body of an army’s thought: the way it feels about the soil and about the people from which it springs. The way that it feels about their cause and their politics as compared with other causes and other politics. The way that it feels about its friends and allies, as well as its enemies. About its commanders and goldbricks. About food and shelter. Duty and leisure. Payday and sex. Militarism and civilianism. Freedom and slavery. Work and want. Weapons and comradeship. Bunk fatigue and drill. Discipline and disorder. Life and death. God and the devil (p.158).
In military terms, a regiment with high morale was far less likely to cause trouble than one with low morale. Additionally, the ways that the soldiers performed had a direct bearing on their mental state. Morale was not necessarily a state of enthusiasm, but it was what kept the men in better spirits and gave them more tools to cope with their situation. The homosocial bonds formed by battalions during the war were essential to keeping the men fighting – they did it partly for their country, but more importantly for the people that surrounded them.
The British army was largely composed of inexperienced civilians with no common ground. Although there were groups from certain areas or professions; “Pals Battalions”, these formed only part of a regiment often comprised of over sixty percent of men from other areas. Geography or vocation was furthermore no guarantee of amicability. A strong group dynamic was therefore essential but not always present, and both the individuals and the army as an organisation had to create ways in which they could relate to each other.
Troop entertainment formed the central core of morale boosting exercises and socialisation when the troops were on rest. The army already recognised that keeping the men busy could prevent trouble, and although it allowed the soldiers time to visit the local estaminet or brothel, it tried to fill as much of the average privates life as possible. If troops were occupied, even with menial tasks, they had less time to complain or act on these complaints. Furthermore, they would have less time to consider their situation and become demoralised or mutinous. Much of the time out of the lines was therefore spent in drill, kit inspection or repairs. Many trench newspapers took issue with this, the 5th Glo’ster Gazette saying “if parading at 4am, with field operations ensuing until 9pm, comes under the heading of “rest”, describe your ideas as to how a busy day should be spent” (#13, July 1916). Free time during the day was limited, and the army was initially concerned that troops spent so much of it being active – in particular by competing in football or cricket matches. It was originally considered to waste of valuable energy and further exhaust the men. However, the army quickly realised the benefits of these activities as they were bringing the men together through shared behaviour that they enjoyed, and began to sanction them more. By the end of the war, most battalions had their own teams, and league matches were played on a regular basis both amongst the B.E.F. and against the French poilu. Concert parties were also successful enough for most regiments to have a permanent corps of entertainers. These in turn merited ancillaries and supporters. Cicely Hamilton, the writer of the satire William - An Englishman, (1919, Persephone) spent from 1915-18 in France as a member of “Concerts at the Front”, an organisation set up to entertain the troops when they went on rest. Again, the unofficial sanctioning of the B.E.F. is apparent as she was allowed to continue her work until the offices at Abbeville were bombed and destroyed.
It is however unfair to claim that the army officers were entirely adverse to participation and organisation of sports or entertainment on rest. Initial censure by the higher echelons of the army was to some extent countered by their own previous preconceptions and lifestyles. Younger officers recognised the organisation of activities such cricket matches and football leagues as a natural extension of their duties in the army. Most of the volunteer officers came from a public school tradition placing great emphasis on the ideals engendered through sportsmanship. The idea that young gentlemen should adhere to a concept of Englishness that extolled “Play up, play up and play the game” overflowed into their roles in the army. In Notes For Young Officers, issued in 1917, recruits were advised
“An officer must not think that his duties end with the dismissal of his platoon after the parade. The life of an average private soldier is a dull one, the class from which he comes has not much time for amusement, and it is the officers who have to teach him to amuse himself in the right way” (p.68).
This is quite clearly hokum, but it does go far to explain the ethos behind publications like the Wipers Times, which has a clear reference point from middle-class society and interests, but is published with the intent of distribution to a far more varied audience.
All forms of entertainment did go some way to temporarily removing class barriers. As well as the trench journals, concert parties and music hall acts that were allowed by the officer class, higher ranks played in the sports matches and sometimes arranged their own teams (although the troops found this more amusing than serious). Although most of these activities were not officially sanctioned, the presence of officers gave off the record permission for the entertainments to continue. Again this helped encourage better relationships in an army which otherwise relied very heavily on strict class boundaries. All of these activities helped to encourage stronger feelings of community and “belonging” amongst the troops, making them part of a socially aligned unit as well as a military one.
The last reason that morale was so important is related to the cultural expectations of the British nation. War was seen as an adventure, a noble and just fight against a rightfully wrong army. The soldier was expected to behave in certain ways- to face adversity nobly, to comport himself honourably at all times, to be patriotic and brave, and to do all of this with the English sense of wry wit. This manifests itself in two ideologies; essentially that officers should be witty and erudite, and the average working class Tommy must always smile through whatever hardship was thrown at him. Both groups were expected to keep a stiff upper lip at all time. Crucial to this lip-locking activity was the humour that accompanied it – the true Englishman could face anything with his barbed tongue and sense of the ridiculous. Again, given the conditions of the war this attitude seems both impossible and inappropriate to a modern reader, but not so to the troops at the time. Troop entertainments were partly created to reflect this ethos of “Englishness” suggesting a false sense of morale emulating the ideology of home. However, the army was in a very different environment to the people at home. This awareness produces a certain amount of deviation and eventual subversiveness, reflecting back on the troops in a positive way. This is De Sousa’s theory in action – the soldiers create a situation exclusive to themselves, but they construct it with recognisable devices that enable humour to be appreciated on both sides. A good example is the plays. These mimicked the conventional style of productions at home; simple melodrama with a hero, an enemy and a bit of romance. An audience at home recognised these devices and thusly still found the plays funny. However, the plays would subvert the traditional formula – the hero would be a fool for staying at the front, the heroine would be deliberately overacted or alternatively, male. The enemy was never the Germans, but usually a devious and misguided general. In A Soldier of Sorts (1917) the enemy is Sir Darcy Red-Taype, the oblivious general residing safely in the War Office. Early on in the play (and the war) he says “I never felt so sure of war as I do today, why I can feel it in the air. I am an old man who knows the feeling of defeat and the feeling of victory, and it is victory I feel today…” (I.i). The civilians recognise the character of the bumbling and vainglorious fool; the troops recognise this and they relate to it personally – it is this kind of man sending them to die on a regular basis. Thus the sense of exclusivity is maintained and reinforced for the soldiers, and the civilians are encouraged by the soldiers’ laughter.
This is an incredibly destructive discourse in the long term, but temporarily it helped reinforce the soldiers’ sense of hegemony whilst also encouraging their morale. The need to create comedy for both an exclusive group and a critical audience who wanted to believe that they were “always cheerful” meant that the soldiers made stronger attempts to make themselves laugh. They were supposed to remain optimistic and therefore they often made far more effort behind the lines to participate in activities that would make them more optimistic. Troop journals demonstrate this tension by encouraging cheeriness whilst simultaneously decrying the home press for demanding it. The Listening Post published a fairly typical poem dealing with this concept.
This front line stuff
Is pretty tough
In spite of what the papers say:
Newspaper bluff
And Kindred guff
Make out that we’re ALWAYS feeling gay.
SOMETIMES we are
WE never bar
A hearty laugh in camp or trench
But it would jar
An armoured car
To take it ALL without a wrench.
(#24, April 1917)
It is for this reason that the songs of the war are so different. Songs were only produced for one audience; their creators. Many people are aware of songs such as “Tipperary” and “The Roses of Picardy”, but these are the songs leaning towards the sentimental and not the specific. The songs which the army sang on the march, in rest and at the front (quietly), give a far more bitter and frightening view of the war. They are laden with pertinent meaning and often aggressively obscene. This is an aspect which was not reproduced for the home front. The Long Trail (Brophy and Partridge) is one of the only catalogues of sanctioned songs, versions censored by the soldiers themselves. The songs show how truly subversive the cultural production could be, giving examples of humour at it’s most vicious and personal. This aspect will be discussed more fully in the “wartime entertainment” section.
Humour was a temporary distraction from the war, a way of containing the situation by trivialising and laughing at it. It is related very specifically to fear – we can only laugh at danger or difficulty if we have successfully mastered our fear of them. The soldiers were trying to master their own fears by making them humorous. The extent with which they succeeded is uncertain, but the sharing of this humour brought both some acceptance of the situation and a feeling of shared hardships; thus bringing the soldiers closer together as companions. This has a direct correlation with the mythology of the war. As the war becomes history, it is perceived as an exceptionally terrifying situation, an almost revolutionary ideology. The war is seen as the death of innocence: a period which was both unforeseen and terrifying for the people involved. If anything, the war becomes more frightening once the fighting is over and the “truth” about conditions at the front are revealed through books such as “Memories Of A Foxhunting Man” None of the coping strategies employed in the front lines are privileged anymore, and therefore it becomes far harder to actually laugh at it. It is increasingly seen as not done to represent the war through songs or satire, and although there is considerable interest in the trench magazines, the songs and music hall, they are seen retrospectively as symptomatic of the naïve attitude of Britain before the war – that the fighting would be noble, patriotic and relatively painless.
The troops did not smile at all times. They couldn’t possibly have done this most of the time, or even part of the time. The war was a ghastly thing that hardly any of them were prepared for. It was frightening, unpleasant, dirty and at times, boring. But it was vital to them that they not betray this to the home front. The concert parties, the music hall and the trench journals were all produced with an awareness of the civilians, and to the soldier this was a critical and unforgiving audience. War had made them barbarous killers; the reality of the war surrounded them with death and suffering on all sides. However this was not something that they wanted to admit to a general public which did not understand (or pretended not to understand) the conditions in the front lines. The soldiers were aware that they were caught within a cultural paradox – one which demanded they tell the truth at all times but then refused to believe them when they did. If they did tell the truth, they would be condemned as cowards. Therefore their writing betrays a need to compromise – to make sidelong references to the real situations, but to disguise them under a veneer of respectability: through good literature, educated poetry, neatly contrived stage plays and emulative music hall turns. It is only in the trench songs, which were used by the troops and the troops alone, that elements of discontent and fear are so strongly vocalised.
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